Month: December 2020

Talking about your fantasy football league is a tough sell for someone not in it, but when that league involves trash talking guys like Ryan Reynolds and Chris Evans, people tend to be more willing to listen. This was why Joe Russo and I spent an afternoon on a Zoom call talking about Reynolds’ strong fantasy season ending in disappointment thanks to Chris Pratt.

AGBO, the film production company led by brothers Joe and Anthony Russo, sponsored a Superhero League with some of the biggest movie stars on the planet to raise money for charity through FanDuel. The 14-team league includes the biggest stars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and also ESPN fantasy football expert Matthew Berry. But despite having an expert among Avengers, it was Pratt who wound up on top after Week 16 of the NFL season wrapped up.

“Reynolds was hot all year but he lost in the first round to Pratt,” Russo said, going through rosters and breaking down what went wrong for a team that drafted Alvin Kamara and went 11-2 in the regular season.

Pratt was the eight seed, he explained, but he’d been “on a run,” beating Reynolds, then Chris Evans and later Simu Liu in the finals to claim the title. We didn’t talk about just fantasy football, of course, but his excitement for the Cleveland Browns and fantasy football was clear. Russo also spoke to us about the future of the MCU and Star Wars universe and what life has been like in Hollywood during a pandemic.

Uproxx: I wanted to start with a football question and I know you’re from Cleveland but you’ve been in California for a long time, but are you a Browns fan?

Joe Russo: I’m a huge Browns fan!

OK, then I have to ask how you’re feeling about this season and their postseason chances.

I’m ecstatic. I think all Browns fans have a bit of PTSD because we’re used to — or all Cleveland sports fans, frankly until the Cavs won a couple of years back. We’re used to losing in the most dramatic possible ways. So I think I’m cautiously optimistic.

This is where I’ll reveal I’m a Bills fan so I share your pain. There are actually a few Browns fans on staff here at Uproxx and we’re all convinced the Bills and Browns are destined to meet in the postseason.

That would be incredible. I’m worried, because I think the Bills are probably the hottest team right now in the AFC. They look really good. But, I mean, that would be amazing. Talk about shaking up the traditional playoff landscape. You get the Browns and the Bills playing each other in a meaningful game in the postseason, it feels like buzzard world.

Yeah we’re used to 8-0 games in the snow and 6-3 games where there are more punts than first downs. This is a new year, for sure.

Without question, they do look great. And I gotta tell you, Cole Beasley has been a huge help for me on my fantasy teams.

I wanted to ask about your teams and just what was your draft strategy heading into this year. It was obviously going to be complicated with coronavirus and schedule changes. Did you do anything different to prep for this?

It was hard because you can’t, you just had to be ready to go on the waiver wire. My draft strategy, I had the good fortune to be friends with Matthew Berry, who is a good friend of mine. So I usually call him in August and ask, “What’s the draft strategy this year?”

He was really high on the top two or three tight ends going early, and waiting on a QB. Which I did in most leagues, I tried to vary up my strategy because I play in five leagues, because if you wind up with very similar teams and you have a catastrophic injury, all your teams are done. So I tried to vary up my rosters significantly from league to league. And I was fortunate enough to make it to two championships this year, though I will say I’m an underdog in both leagues, I’d say. But Cole Beasley and Myles Gaskin were two waiver wire pickups that were big for me this year.

I was going to say, that’s a lot of leagues to be involved in. But the league you run through AGBO involving Berry and a lot of Marvel actors is probably the highest profile one anyone can imagine. Is it different because so many people pay attention to it?

One, it’s amazing because it’s for charity and there are a lot of great charities people are playing for. And FanDuel really stepped up this year and put $1.25 million in the pot, which is incredible. So, that’s probably the league that’s closest to my heart for that reason.

And also working with a lot of those actors for almost a decade, they’ve become so close to me and my family. And it’s good to be able to rib and roast each other every year, we get a lot of laughs out of it and it keeps everyone in contact with one another.

Yeah, I was watching some of the videos and saw that there were moms involved, a lot of smack talk and people seem to really enjoy it. I’ve never really found that to be the appeal of fantasy football, but is that one of the aspects you really enjoy?

It’s not the focus for me, I really love watching football, I love the strategy of playing fantasy football. But when you have this many funny and talented people in the league it just seemed like a very natural concept to roast each other for charity. So it felt like a good way to bring attention to the league and the charities.

I have to say I saw Matt Berry went 8-5. It must be a pretty great feeling to beat a fantasy football guy at fantasy football. Like, we don’t get to out-act an Avenger in a movie or anything like that. So it must be pretty satisfying to do that.

I think so. I think the people definitely consider that a feather in their cap when they beat Matthew. He certainly has an inside track to pickups on the waiver wire because he gets that information ahead of everyone. It’s nice being friends with Matthew, he’ll get a hot tip on a player who may be injured and pick up their backup in the superhero league and then text me to pick up that player in my other leagues that he doesn’t play with me in.

With the Avengers and all the movies you’ve done, you’ve been around these guys a decade. What’s maybe the most fun conversation you’ve had on set while working on these films?

Oh boy. I mean, there’s been a lot of laughs. A lot of times we gather around the monitor and tell stories. They’re long days, so a lot of times we’re trying to keep each other’s spirits up. I’m trying to think of the funniest things. A lot of pranks get played.

One of the sweetest things is Robert Downey actually bought … Robert likes to restore old cars. It’s a hobby of his. And during Endgame he gifted Chris Evans a beautiful blue restored, I believe it was a Camaro. For playing opposite of him for all those years. That was a really touching moment because it really showed how connected everyone’s become and Robert’s generosity and the fact that this family who spent 12 hours a day together was going to be leaving one another. That’s probably one of the more touching moments on set.

It’s kind of an interesting period for Marvel and the new phase they’re headed with storytelling. You’ve been involved in so much of it, but maybe not as much as they get involved in TV and expanding into new shows. Is it kind of weird not to have the same level of involvement as you take on other projects?

We’re fans, so I love it. I just love being surprised by what’s coming next. We talk to Kevin (Feige) a bit, we text. We’re all really close. But I want to be a fan and just be surprised when I go to the theater or watch something on Disney+ the same way I was with The Mandalorian and was surprised at the end of Season 2 with everybody else.

I texted (Jon) Favreau after I watched the ending and said, “That’s one of the best moments of the last 10 years as a fan for me. Thank you.” So it’s good to, as fun as it was to work in the Marvel universe, it’s equally as fun to be on the outside and getting as excited as everyone else about what’s coming.

Earlier in the month Disney announced a bunch of new shows and projects in the Marvel and Star Wars universes. Some have framed it as an attempt to do to Star Wars what Marvel has created with the MCU. Do you think that that’s accurate, and if so what are some of the challenges that lay ahead to making that a reality?

I think it’s getting more complicated, certainly because there’s more material now. They have all the Disney+ shows and movies now. But Kevin has built an incredible team at that company of amazing creatives and they’ve got a great system for quality control so the expectation is that while they’re all working together like the ’90s Bulls. This is finely-honed machine that’s going to produce some great content.

The challenges are always how do you keep, as it gets bigger and bigger, how do you keep it all connected? And how do you make sure it feels organic? But I think they’re going to be fine.

Obviously this is a tough year to create anything, it’s not fun. But some people have found ways to be creative in this time. Have you found a way to be creative or has it been tougher just to do anything with all the added safety concerns and stress and cost to do basically anything in 2020?

What’s been unique about it is that we’ve been especially conservative, my family and I. It’s good because we’ve spent a lot of time together, growing as a family. And I do find that, look, certainly stimulation helps with creativity. And there’s a lack of stimulation from the outside world. But I’ve found it to be productive in that one, I’m just generally happier because I get to spend more time with my kids. And two, all the drive time, especially in Los Angeles, has disappeared from my work day. And I just have more time to be productive.

Again, if there’s any silver linings that come out of this tragedy it’s that it may change the way that we work in the future which allows for more family time because we’ve been forced to mass adopt technology that allows us to work remotely.

Speaking of that, I know that you directed the Dungeons and Dragons episode of Community and I wanted to see if you were doing any games like that remotely to pass the time like I have.

Oh, that’s great. I have not, I haven’t played D&D in probably 20 years. It was a big influence in my brother and I growing up so I wanted to do that episode, but I have not. How’s it been playing remotely? Are you playing over Zoom?

Yeah, playing over Zoom with a document camera and using a lot of websites and all that. It’s possible, it just takes a little longer. Everything does.

One person rolling for all of you or you all roll yourselves?

We all roll individually, and if you don’t believe someone’s roll you make them move the camera to prove it.

There’s a lot of trust involved.

That’s right. Anyway, you spoke earlier in the year about the challenges facing movie theaters. And as someone who misses going to movies and detaching from reality for a bit, I was wondering if there was anything else you’re missing right now or are eager to get back to on the other side of this?

Certainly going to the movies. I think the sense of community that you get going into a theater with a group of people that you don’t know and then having a collective emotional experience is almost impossible to replicate outside of a theatrical space. So I think that’s the primary one for me that I miss the most. I think my kids probably miss being able to play sports and socializing with friends but, like I said, there have been other positives. Which is getting closer and bonding with each other at home.

I know you probably can’t say much about The Gray Man, but it’s a really big endeavor and Netflix seems to have high hopes for a potential franchise. It’s something you’re familiar with as far as the stakes involved, but how exciting is it to take that project on?

We love it. It’s certainly a genre that we adored and grew up in. Our father, those were his favorite movies, spy films and thrillers. And we shared a lot of experiences with him watching those.

Look, it’s a dream job, getting to be a filmmaker. It really is. Getting to use your imagine to tell stories and hopefully impact people the way that you were as a kid. And we love this particular project because it’s a thrilling project but it also has some real modern thematics in it that can make it relevant and ask a lot of questions about what’s going on in the world today. Which I think is why you make genre movies: you want to use the compulsive nature of stories to also introduce interesting thematics to an audience that maybe doesn’t want to deal with those issues outside of a fictional space.

Becky Hammon made history with the Spurs on Wednesday night, becoming the first woman ever to be a head coach in an NBA game. When Kyrie Irving was asked about it after Nets practice on Thursday, he praised Hammon and chuckled that he was glad that Spurs coach Gregg Popovich got ejected and cleared the way for Hammon.

“It’s a genderless society that’s going on in 2020, and I respect it,” Irving told reporters. “There shouldn’t be any role that is deemed male or female.”

This all comes after Irving initially determined he would not fulfill his obligation to speak with reporters during this Nets season and then was fined by the NBA. Over the past couple weeks, Irving has begun to do routine Zoom press conferences like his teammates do, but because of his superstardom and natural curiosity about the world outside of basketball, Irving often gets asked big-picture questions like this one.

Of course, Irving is also in his own small way involved with women’s basketball, especially after offering to pay the salaries of WNBA stars such as Natasha Cloud and Renee Montgomery who sat out the 2020 Bubble season.

Year after year, Hammon continues to be largely ignored when it comes to head coaching searches around the NBA, but she nevertheless continues to be a trail blazer in this league and seems to have enormous respect from players and coaches everywhere. Count Irving among those excited about her finally getting a chance on Wednesday.

The whole “NBA champion Alex Caruso” thing hasn’t gotten old for the Los Angeles Lakers’ 26-year-old backup guard. Caruso, who has turned into something of a cult hero for fans of the purple and gold, is a story of hard work and determination paying off in the form of immortality, as the once-undrafted free agent went through a pair of G League systems — first Oklahoma City, then Los Angeles — before getting the call to join the Lakers.

Since first getting the opportunity to join L.A.’s senior side during the 2017-18 campaign, the final one before LeBron James moved from the shores of Lake Erie to the Pacific coast, Caruso has been something of a stalwart. No, he has not played 82 games a year or anything, but he’s grown increasingly reliable for whomever has coached the team during his tenure as a backup guard who can keep the offense moving, hit some shots, and compete.

This paid off last year when Caruso appeared in all 21 games the Lakers played during their run to a championship, granting him one form of basketball immortality. And when it came time for the offseason, he was determined to put the work in to make sure the team could make it back to the mountaintop. Well, eventually.

Caruso took three weeks off from basketball following his return from the NBA’s Orlando Bubble, instead opting to find other ways to train as he decompressed back home on the heels of the longest season of his life.

“It was great,” Caruso told Dime prior to the start of the season. “When I told you I took three weeks off, I took three weeks off of playing basketball, so I didn’t touch a ball. I was still getting lifts in using my Tonal, using some other guys that are around the L.A. area. The Tonal’s been great for me, because when I need to get some extra work in either on a day where I feel like I didn’t get enough in when I was at the gym, or I just wanna get some extra work in at night because I’ve got the itch to get into the workout routine again, like I said, I just pop in some music, press play, and get after it, 30-40 minute workout. Even a 15-20 minute yoga session or stretch session just to kinda get the body more fluid and better chance for recovery. That’s kinda what I did for three weeks, then through that three weeks, it kinda carried me back to where I needed to be.”

Using something like Tonal has been part of Caruso’s general maturation process off the floor. As he’s become more and more tenured in the league, Caruso has come across a number of people — whether they be folks with the teams for which he’s played or otherwise — who have helped shape what he does to make sure his body is in top physical condition before, during, and after the season. All of this has been incorporated into how he exercises.

“I’ve used a lot of those experiences to kinda grow my workout routine, I have different teammates that I’ve asked about how they do their offseasons and what they’re focused on,” Caruso says. “A lot like my game, my offseason programs are growing and becoming more fine-tuned the more time I have to put into them and the more opportunities I have to see different workouts, see different stuff that works best for me. It’s been great to be able to grow that and become more knowledgeable about what I need.”

All of that has taken on extra importance this year, as Caruso and the Lakers know a bullseye exists on their backs due to their championship. Caruso explains the whole thing as a “second bullseye,” as he believes one will inherently always exist due to the fact that the team is tied for the most championships in NBA history.

He does credit the team’s leadership, whether it be someone like LeBron James or non-players like head coach Frank Vogel and general manager Rob Pelinka, for creating an environment where “it’s easy to fall in line and make sure that we’re constantly getting better and focusing on stuff that we need to improve on.” And this year, that environment has led to them having an early 3-2 record amid this slog of a season — Caruso has appeared in three games, all off the bench, and is averaging 5.3 points, 1.7 rebounds, one assist, and 0.7 steals in 13.7 minutes a night.

Caruso also has some unique insight into one of L.A.’s most intriguing young players, second-year guard Talen Horton-Tucker. A revelation for the team during the preseason, Horton-Tucker followed a similar path to Caruso, using the G League as a way to improve his game last year as he bided his time and waited for a spot to open up on the main roster.

Perhaps it is because he is a beneficiary of this system, but Caruso believes the single most important thing for a person to develop is to play competitive basketball. It prevents a talent like Horton-Tucker from getting the necessary reps at the NBA level, but the G League gives him exactly what he needed to become a better player.

“We had such great depth last year that there were no minutes to throw Talen out there and give him 15 minutes some nights, or throw him out an 8-minute stretch and see how he does,” Caruso says. “We had such a good team that there wasn’t enough minutes to go around, so being able to get him with South Bay, where I had a lot of success in growing my game and growing my confidence, I think he did the same thing. They’ve got a great coaching staff, a great front office in South Bay. Talen, testament to him as well, just continuing to work, continuing to want to get better makes it a lot easier for you when you’ve got great help.”

The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina: Part Four (Netflix series) — The Riverdale spinoff will come to a (planned) end with this installment starring Kiernan Shipka. This time around, the Devil-afflicted Nick’s attempting to win Sabrina back after surrendering to his darker urges, but The Eldritch Terrors have descended upon Greendale, and The Void could truly be the End of All Things. Can the Fright Club save the day? I’m (strangely) pulling for Harvey over here.

Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve (Thursday, ABC 8:00 p.m.) — Ryan Seacrest is back as host, along with Lucy Hale and Billy Porter, straight out of Times Square. Ciara will also host from LA, and performers include Megan Thee Stallion, Jennifer Lopez, Machine Gun Kelly, Miley Cyrus, and Doja Cat. Expect a bonus appearance by Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden as the world looks forward to forgetting 2020.

CNN’s New Year’s Eve (Thursday, CNN 8:00 p.m.) — Will Don Lemon be drunk again tonight? One can only hope. He’ll take over the show around 12:30 a.m. with Brooke Baldwin. Until then, Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen will re-team to do the countdown thing. Highlights will include appearances from Desus & Mero, John Mayer, Patti LaBelle, Carole Baskin (?), Josh Groban, and Jon Bon Jovi.

Snoop Dogg’s Virtual New Year’s Eve Party (Thursday, SnoopNYE.com 11:00 p.m.) — Presented by The Go-Gig Show and TBS, users must register at SnoopNYE.com to partake in the celebration. Guests will include Rosario Dawson and Bert Kreischer, and there will be a sword swallower on hand as Snoop gives everyone a tour of Snoop’s Compound, which contains a basketball court and the Doggyland casino.

NBC’s New Year’s Eve (Thursday, NBC 10:00 p.m.) — Carson Daly’s returning to do his Times Square thing again with Amber Ruffin on hand. Expect to see Busta Rhymes featuring Anderson .Paak, Chloe x Halle, Bebe Rexha featuring Doja Cat, Blake Shelton, Gwen Stefani, and more.

Fox’s New Year’s Eve Toast & Roast (Thursday, Fox 8:00 p.m.) — Community pals Ken Jeong and Joel McHale host with performances from The Masked Singer winner LeAnn Rimes, along with more from Gloria Estefan, John Legend, Ava Max, Green Day, and Gabby Barrett.

In case you missed this farewell to a horrible year:

Death To 2020 (Netflix special) — Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker has had it with 2020, too, which is saying a lot, given that he’s used to telling the most unsettling tales on the streaming waves. In this darkly comedic special, familiar faces (including Samuel L. Jackson, Leslie Jones, Hugh Grant, Kumail Nanjiani, Tracey Ullman, Lisa Kudrow, Cristin Milioti, and more) come together documentary-style while narrating real-life archival footage as renowned (yet fictitious) characters. It’s the year-end meltdown that you didn’t know that you needed.

2021 isn’t here yet, but it is in some part of the world. While it was morning in the US, South Korea was ringing in the new year, which was celebrated with Big Hit Labels’ 2021 New Year’s Eve Live livestream concert. Since BTS pretty much owns Twitter, a lot of the platform’s trending topics during the show were related to it, and Halsey was also a trending topic as she joined the group to perform their collaboration “Boy With Luv.”

The performance was a perfect summary of entertainment in 2020: It was different than usual, as the band members and Halsey were in individual video windows performing their parts in a distanced way. Still, though, the industry has adapted and learned how to entertain in this format, which is exactly what happened here.

BTS’ impact on the music industry and the internet overall was undeniable in 2020. Topics related to the group are regularly trending on Twitter, and of the year’s top 29 tweets worldwide, they had about two thirds of them. Meanwhile, Halsey made some noise on the platform as well, as she became a star of basketball Twitter by launching a new NBA-specific account and sharing her thoughts about the league.

Watch a clip of the “Boy With Luv” performance above.

As the NBA continues upon an ambitious and risky course through the 2020-21 season, it is bringing back some of the technology that made the Bubble successful, according to a report by Baxter Holmes of ESPN.

The Kinexon SafeZone wristband was one of the key elements used to keep the Bubble locked down this summer, as everyone inside wore the wristband, and in the case of a positive case (which fortunately never happened), the technology would allow the league to determine close contacts of the infected person. The wristband also would beep when people came within six feet of one another, though that function will be disabled now, Holmes reported.

Those in Tier 1 and Tier 2 in the league’s structure (this includes players, coaches, front office personnel, trainers and team staff such as communications staffers) will wear the band starting Jan. 7 at all team-sanctioned functions, including on the team bus, during travel, and during practices. They will not wear the bands during games.

Holmes also notes that GPS location will not be recorded, which means players will not be monitored moment to moment, but rather the technology will be used to measure “the distance and duration of in-person interactions” per a memo obtained by Holmes.

Other leagues such as the NFL have put these sensors to work already in 2020 and pro football has mostly had success when it comes to contact tracing during its season. Now, the NBA will try their hand as they attempt to build out a program that leads to as few infections as possible over the course of the season.

In 2017, a fun annual music trend began (as Know Your Meme notes). That was when fans started figuring out at what time to start playing certain songs on New Year’s Eve so a highlight from the song will happen the instant the clock strikes midnight and the next year begins. People have shared new discoveries in the trend in the following years, and now there’s a new batch of them for 2020.

One fan noted a discovery about Taylor Swift’s Evermore highlight “Long Story Short,” tweeting, “if you play long story short by Taylor Swift at exactly 11:56:32 pm on New Years Eve, Taylor will sing ‘long story short I survived’ at exactly midnight, and I think that’s a nice way of ending this effing year” Meanwhile, somebody else figured out how to hear Phoebe Bridgers scream at midnight, while another person worked out how to start 2020 with some encouraging words from Kid Cudi.

Check out more “if you play” tweets below, including some highlights from previous years.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Cardi B had both one of the most successful and most explicit hits of 2020, as “WAP” is all about a certain anatomical area in a moisture-heavy state. While the numbers have shown that a lot of people are cool with that sort of profanity in music, others wish Cardi would skew more PG. She drew the ire of a detractor on Twitter this morning for a similar reason, but Cardi had a strong comeback to their criticisms.

Late last night, Cardi B asked her Twitter followers, “What’s a good movie to watch on Netflix before I start f*cking?” That prompted one user to respond, “Ugh, why can’t you just stop being so raunchy? Do u talk to your daughter like that? Think about it.Do you think when your girl grows up she isn’t going to see her mom talking like this? There’s a time and place for everything. Do the right thing.”

In her reply, Cardi insisted that she picked her time and place pretty well, writing, “There’s a time & a place … girl this place is Twitter & the time was at 1am GROWN UP TIME ! Why would I talk to my 2 year old daughter like that ?like what ?”

For the record, the set of movie recommendations Cardi got was a mixed bag, including everything from Snowden to Home Alone to Mr. Bean. (Also for the record, there’s no movie called Mr. Bean, but the Rowan Atkinson character is in Bean and Mr. Bean’s Holiday.)

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Oftentimes, the journey to our true calling is winding and unexpected. Take Lainey Morse, who went from office manager to creator of the viral trend, Goat Yoga, thanks to her natural affinity for goats and throwing parties.

Back in 2015, Lainey bought a farm in Oregon and got her first goats who she named Ansel and Adams. “Once I got them, I was obsessed,” says Lainey. “It was hard to get me off the farm to go do anything else.”

Right away, she noticed what a calming presence they had. “Even the way they chew their cud is relaxing to be around because it’s very methodical,” she says. Lainey was going through a divorce and dealing with a rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis at the time, but even when things got particularly hard, the goats provided relief.

“I found it impossible to be stressed or depressed when I was with them.”

She started inviting friends up to the farm for what she called “Goat Happy Hour.” Soon, the word spread about Lainey’s delightful, stress-relieving furry friends. At one point, she auctioned off a child’s birthday party at her farm, and the mom asked if they could do yoga with the goats. And lo, the idea for goat yoga was born.

A baby goat on a yoga student. Photo courtesy of Lainey Morse

Goat yoga went viral so much so that by fall of 2016, Lainey was able to quit her office manager job at a remodeling company to manage her burgeoning goat yoga business full-time. Now she has 10 locations nationwide.

Lainey handles the backend management for all of her locations, and loves that side of the business too, even though it’s less goat-related. “I still have my own personal Goat Happy Hour every single day so I still get to spend a lot of time with my goats,” says Lainey. “I get the best of both worlds.”

Lainey with her goat Fabio. Photo courtesy of Lainey Morse

Since COVID-19 hit, her locations have had to close temporarily. She hopes her yoga locations will be able to resume classes in the spring when the vaccine is more widely available. “I think people will need goat yoga more than ever before, because everyone has been through so much stress in 2020,” says Lainey.

Major life changes like Lainey’s can come around for any number of reasons. Even if they seem out of left field to some, it doesn’t mean they’re not the right moves for you. The new FOX series “Call Me Kat”, which premieres Sunday, January 3rd after NFL and will continue on Thursday nights beginning January 7^th, exemplifies that. The show is centered around Kat, a 39-year old single woman played by Mayim Bialik, who quit her math professor job and spent her life’s savings to pursue her dreams to open a Cat Café in Louisville, Kentucky.

Jeff Harry started making similar moves when he was just 10-years-old, and kept making them throughout his life. After seeing the movie “Big,”Jeff knew he wanted to play with toys for a living, so he started writing toy companies asking for next steps. He finally got a response when he was a sophomore in high school — the company told him he needed to become a mechanical engineer first.

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He did that, and eventually got a job with Toys R Us in the Labor Planning Department where he was almost immediately disillusioned. “There was no play, no fun, no high fives, and no kids,” says Jeff.

Soon after, in late 2001, he decided to quit the business and move across the country to Oakland, California. While there, he found a job posting on Craigslist for a STEM education company called Play-Well, which uses LEGOs to teach kids about engineering. Even though they only had 7 employees and only paid $150 a week, he thought it sounded promising and applied.

Courtesy of Jeff Harry

Over the next 16 years, Jeff helped grow the company to over 400 employees. By “embracing a play-oriented mindset, we said yes to everything even if we didn’t know if we would be able to figure it out,” says Jeff. “We were constantly doing experiments, open to failure, not fixated on certain results.” Through this method, they became the largest LEGO-inspired STEM organization in the United States.

Since they were teaching lots of kids whose parents worked in Silicon Valley, they were eventually asked to run team-building workshops with some of the top tech companies in the business. They did this for nine years and excelled at it, but eventually, Jeff began to feel like the importance of play was getting lost. In response, he created a consulting business called Rediscover Your Play, which uses positive psychology and play to help reinvigorate employees and help companies tackle workplaces challenges.

Now, he finally feels like he’s found his purpose because he’s living, and sharing, his passion for play every day.

Your life and career path don’t have to look like anyone else’s, in fact, it’s usually better when they don’t. If you follow your gut and buy some goats or apply to an unorthodox job posting on Craigslist, you might just open a door to one spectacular future.

So, this New Year…Quit your job. Open a cat cafe. Live your best life.

Call Me Kat premieres on FOX Sunday, January 3rd after NFL and continues on Thursdays beginning January 7th at 9/8c. Starring Mayim Bialik, the show is about a 39-year-old woman who quit her successful, yet unfulfilling, job to pursue her dreams to open a cat café. Kat couldn’t be any happier with her new life… despite her mother pushing Kat to get married already!

A month ago, Dua Lipa hosted her Studio 2054 livestream concert, and among the guests joining her for the performance was Kylie Minogue, who, like Lipa, also put out a disco-indebted album this year, DISCO. Minogue joined Lipa to perform Lipa’s Silk City collab “Electricity” as well as Minogue’s own “Real Groove.” Now the pair have turned in a studio version of “Real Groove” based on the performance, and it’s a ton of fun. The upbeat track could have fit right in on Future Nostalgia, which could really be seen as a sister album to Minogue’s DISCO.

Ahead of Studio 2054, Lipa sang the praises of Minogue, saying in one interview, “I love her. […] I’m just so happy because she’s based in London, was up for coming down and doing this and it’s gonna be a lot of fun, so I hope everyone enjoys it.” She added in another, “The queen, Kylie Minogue, is also joining me for Studio 2054, which I am so over the moon about, you have no idea. To be able to be there and share this space with her, I am just floored, honestly. I can’t believe it, I am so happy. That she would want to join me is just… I’m at a loss for words.”

Listen to “Real Groove (Studio 2054 Remix)” above.

Dua Lipa and Kylie Minogue are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.